Wildfire in Okanagan Mountain Park behaving as expected

CENTRAL OKANAGAN – The fire burning in Okanagan Mountain Park has tripled in size but while some locals would like to see a much stronger reaction to the fire, B.C. Wildfire is content to leave it alone and after monitoring it overnight, confident it is the right response.

“One of the goals of this fire is to help prevent a large amount of fuel build-up that area,” fire information officer Justine Hunse says.

“If the natural cycle of fire isn’t allowed to occur, we can see things like fuel build-up which can lend itself to more intense fires,” she added, with reference to the Okanagan Mountain Park of 2003.

Hunse says the low-ranked fire burning near the shoreline two kilometres north of Rattlesnake Island has slowly spread overnight to about six hectares, triple what it was yesterday afternoon, but behaving just as predicted.

“The slow rate of spread demonstrates why it makes sense to allow the fire to burn at this time of the year,” she adds. “We do expect some more growth before it self-extinguishes.”

But Hunse says B.C. Wildfire is being doubly cautious, given the sensitivity of locals to wildfire and will provide daily updates until further notice.

Hunse says B.C. Wildfire has three response levels to wildfires— full, modified and monitored — which are selected based on a variety of conditions including proximity to people and buildings, and the time of the year.

The modified response — monitoring the fire and responding only if it reaches previously established trigger points — is the one B.C. Wildfire is using here, Hunse says.


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John McDonald

John began life as a journalist through the Other Press, the independent student newspaper for Douglas College in New Westminster. The fluid nature of student journalism meant he was soon running the place, learning on the fly how to publish a newspaper.

It wasn’t until he moved to Kelowna he broke into the mainstream media, working for Okanagan Sunday, then the Kelowna Daily Courier and Okanagan Saturday doing news graphics and page layout. He carried on with the Kelowna Capital News, covering health and education while also working on special projects, including the design and launch of a mass market daily newspaper. After 12 years there, John rejoined the Kelowna Daily Courier as editor of the Westside Weekly, directing news coverage as the Westside became West Kelowna.

But digital media beckoned and John joined Kelowna.com as assistant editor and reporter, riding the start-up as it at first soared then went down in flames. Now John is turning dirt as city hall reporter for iNFOnews.ca where he brings his long experience to bear on the civic issues of the day.

If you have a story you think people should know about, email John at jmcdonald@infonews.ca

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